But this illustrates the point - there is no hard and fast rule. You should know when you need to score and when you don't. In this instance, I am assuming he knew he could simply run the clock down and the game would be over.

As I have always said, if you are in doubt and think you shouldn't be scoring, then you probably shouldn't.

There is an example of "technically" running up the score in one of the week 1 highlight reels. Let me say straight away that we are not going to take any action, but I am merely using this as an example. It's a bit of a strange one and was in the Green Bay v Seattle game.

Green Bay was backed up towards the end of the game, leading 14-13. Obviously they needed to accomplish a number of things given their starting field position.

First, they needed to get out of their own 20. A 3 and out at that stage would probably have handed the game to the Seahawks.Next, they needed to get Seattle to burn their time outs, achieve the first downs they needed and to burn clock. They accomplished all of these things.

However, what they did with about 1:12 remaining (after Seattle had used all their time outs) was to run in a TD. This was a poor decision because scoring the TD and PAT meant they were 8 ahead. That gave Seattle a chance to go downfield and score a TD and tie the game with a 2 pt conversion.

Because of this, in a sense it meant is wasn't running up the score it could have bitten GB on the backside if Seattle had managed to score. What GB should have done was take a couple of knees and let the clock run out. That way, the win was guaranteed and SEA could not get the ball back.

Had GB taken a couple of knees and then kicked a FG when the clock was about to expire then that would certainly have been running up the score.

So, running up the score does not necessarily mean blowing your opponent away out of sight. It can mean just a few unnecessary points scored at the end of the game. Unfortunately, we all make questionable decisions in the heat of battle and it's easy to analyse things afterwards. I'm sure it must have occurred to Green Bay that they left themselves with some uncomfortable defending to do, which on another day might have resulted in a disastrous ending.

The moral of the story? If you are ahead and have the chance to run the clock out, then do it. I have never seen any bad things happen when someone takes a knee. I've never seen anyone turn the ball over or get injured.